JWT Brand Chakras study seeks to demystify the new-age Mother India

Close on the heels of the Power and the Glory survey, which studied the Global Indian, JWT Brand Chakras’ latest study focusses on the payoffs that mothers want from their children and vice-versa. The insight mining exercise was done at eight centers – Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Thrissur – and covered SEC A, B mothers with children aged between 8 years and 16 years through group discussions and indepth interviews with mother-child pairs.

According to the study, the Indian mother and child is now a team with a shared vision, with mothers actively believing they can shape their children's destiny for mutual benefit.

Mythili Chandrasekar, Senior VP, Corporate Initiatives, who steered the study, said, “Enabling and empowering, coach and companion, event manager and project manager, motherhood has moved beyond protection, nurturance, compassion and selflessness. The child is now a project and a mission; and industriousness, determination, passion and planning are the dominant traits. Children, too, are taking the ‘roti-kapada-makaan’ for granted and are looking to the mother to give them the headstart they need in life and ensure that they remain focused.”

According to the study, children also were conscious of the contribution that their mothers made in their current lives by donning the roles of organiser, guide, enforcer, and friend. While there might be the usual squabbles over food, outings and social activities, children do indeed look up to their mothers to give them courage, inspiration, help them set and achieve their goals, and fill them with a will to win.

According to the study, all mothers showed a strong inclination to power chakra qualities, but three types of mothers emerged – the Lifeline Seeker; the Coronation Seeker; and the Independence Seeker.

Describing the three seekers of motherhood, the study explained that the Lifeline Seeker was the one who had given up hopes on the husband to improve their lives and was totally dependant on the child to rise to glorious levels and rescue her. Looking for insurance and security, she would do everything she could to help them in this journey, but was clearly establishing her rights to the fruits of this labour.

The Coronation Seeker was the one who was hoping her child’s achievements would bring her out of a life of oblivion and bestow on her a halo for greater social conquest. Here, the child was an opportunity to make an overwhelming statement about herself.

The Independence Seeker strove to excel in the mother’s role, geared to fostering independence and self-reliance in her child, so that she would have the freedom and space for her own pursuits. Motherhood enhanced her efficiency and gave her exposure that helped her discover unexplored facets of herself.

While the study focussed on mothers, it revealed three types of fathers too. According to the mothers they were the Genuine Partner, who tried to play a synergistic role, willingly taking up activities that were beyond the mother’s competence; the Conveniently Detached, who took it easy, capitalising on the mother’s high involvement and taking up the provider stance to negate criticism of his lack of involvement; and the Cynically Detached, who disagreed with the approach, perceived the mother as crossing the line and fostering too much dependence, and felt that children needed a more hands-off approach.

Brand Chakras is the Indian strategic planning tool that applies the 2,000-year old chakra system as laid out by Patanjali to consumers and brands. This original system of understanding human behaviour based on the seven major nerve/energy centres in the human body an initiative by Strategic Planning at JWT India.